Audi will rebuild R18 racers from spares before Spa

This season's FIA World Endurance Championship opener at Silverstone proved triumphant for Toyota, fruitful for Porsche, and absolutely catastrophic for Audi. The two-time defending champs, which hadn't registered a double-DNF since Petit Le Mans in 2011, lost both R18 e-tron P1 racers to heavy damage sustained from accidents. Now, the cars are frantically being rebuilt around spare monocoques before the second round at Spa.

According to Audi, the wrecks by Lucas di Grassi and Benoît Tréluyer "caused considerable vehicle damage"—given that both the N°1 and N°2 cars are being "prepared again completely from scratch," we'd say that's about as considerable as it gets.

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Uh, sorry, Benoît, that one looks to be a total loss.

Now, with both R18s binned, the Audi-Joest squad has been presented two major complications, the most imminent of which being that Spa 6 Hours is May 3, meaning the new cars will have to be ready in just 8 days. The second, less immediate (but arguably more important) issue is that next weekend's Belgium enduro is the final race prior to Le Mans 24 in June. Audi relies heavily on engineering feedback from Spa to be competitive at Sarthe—so much so that it fields a third, longtailed car (set to be driven this year by Oliver Jarvis, Filipe Albuquerque and Marco Bonanomi) in full LM24-spec aero for data collection.

Behind Porsche's 919 and Toyota's TS040 in points, and now pressed for time before the next round, Audi doesn't much room for error. If things take a turn for the worst at Spa 6 Hours, the team could find its WEC crown—and flawless Le Mans record—in serious jeopardy.

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